June 1, 2018

Several N.F.L. teams determined cheerleading programs had a scarcity
problem on game days. If cheerleaders were on the sideline dancing,
none were available to serve as scantily clad hostesses who could
mingle with fans high up in the cheap seats or in the luxury suites,
where teams catered to big-money customers.

I don’t see this going well.

In interviews with a dozen women who have worked for N.F.L. teams as
noncheering cheerleaders and six others who had direct knowledge of
the noncheering squads, they described minimum-wage jobs in which
harassment and groping were common, particularly because the women
were required to be on the front lines of partying fans.

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

One of the worst parts of the day was the morning inspection.

Dennis Greene was head of business operations for the Redskins from
2007 until recently. He was ultimately in charge of the ambassador
program, and his job was to sell suites and keep the suiteholders
happy. He would have the ambassadors line up so he could examine them
and choose two to accompany him to suites during the game.

“He would look each of us up and down and say, I want that one and
that one, and everyone hates when you got selected for that,” a former
ambassador said of the lineups that occurred just a few years ago.
“It was humiliating, like we were cattle.”

This is disgusting, but this is only the latest in a few reports of harassment and abuse against cheerleaders in the NFL. It’s time for the NFL to scrap the cheerleader program which is designed to treat women as nothing more than sexual objects for its predominantly male audience. Will they do it? Probably not, because, you know, kneeling during the national anthem is a bigger issue than making sure women are treated with basic human decency. The NFL has their priorities in order for sure.